Chanukah might well be the beginning of martyrdom in human history. According to Arnold Toynbee, who cannot be accused of great partiality towards Jews and Judaism, the first human group to lay down their lives for their G-d may have been the Jews who were martyred for their faith at the time of the Maccabean revolt.
The need to show one's unambiguous loyalty to G-d even at the price of one's life has tragically punctuated Jewish history throughout all the centuries since that time. The records of martyrdom up to and including the Holocaust make sad but impressive reading.
The rule is that in an emergency Jews may compromise Jewish observance – for example, Shabbat or kashrut – but with three exceptions. Not even in an emergency, not even to save one's life, is it permitted to transgress the laws against murder, idolatry or immorality.
The Chanukah story illustrates Jewish willingness even to sacrifice life in order not to undermine these cardinal principles. The Hebrew phrase for the willingness to die for G-d is "Kiddush HaShem"; at the time of the Holocaust, however, great rabbis decreed that there were times when determinedly staying alive was also a form of "Kiddush HaShem".
In the light of claims arising out of supposed ideological martyrdom on the part of members of another faith, it must be stated and
emphasised that in Jewish ethics and teaching martyrdom does not, can not and must not include murdering other people.
If an individual or community is in dire straits and their faith in G-d is directly challenged by an enemy who tries to impose idolatry,
there may be no choice but to suffer death for one's beliefs. However, murder is murder and our ethics can never justify murdering people, even ostensibly in the name of G-d.
Chanukah, the occasion when martyrdom began, is an appropriate moment to restate these sacred principles.
But was Greek culture such a bad thing?
In the days of the Maccabees Greek culture posed a major threat to Jewish identity, especially when it reached the highest echelons of Jewish leadership. Those who went along with everything in the Greek cultural armoury were "mit’yav’nim", “Jewish Hellenisers”.
The Second Book of Maccabees reports that an impious high priest “abolished the lawful way of life and introduced practices which were against the law. He lost no time in establishing a sports stadium at the foot of the citadel itself, and he made the most outstanding of the young men assume the Greek athlete’s hat… The priests no longer had any enthusiasm for their duties at the altar… They placed no value on their hereditary dignities, but cared above everything for Hellenic honours.”
This was going too far, but it illustrates the tug-of-war that comes when there is a pull in two directions – towards modernism and towards tradition. Some go too far in either direction – towards extreme traditionalism and towards extreme anti-traditionalism. The middle of the road always tends to favour a compromise, but then the issue becomes how much of the new idiom and philosophy to adopt without destroying the tenets and practices of tradition. In short, where to stop, where to say “Dayyenu!”
It is today’s problem too, even in Israel. Jews of all shades of opinion utilise many aspects of modernity (ask yourself, for example,
how many cellphones there are amongst the charedim, the ultra-orthodox) but there comes a moment, indeed there are many moments, when one has to have the moral courage to be like our father Abraham, of whom tradition says, “The whole world was on one side whilst Abraham stood on the other”.
Jewish and Greek thinking diverged radically.
* Judaism believed in a G-d who gave a Torah to show the path of truth and virtue.
* Greek thinking preferred the use of scientific reason to attain truth and virtue.
* Hellenism loved beauty;
* Judaism loved goodness
(a modern author has said that one philosophy taught “art for art’s sake” whilst the other preferred “art for goodness’ sake”).
* The Greeks liked to be surrounded by statues and pictures, and they admired physical handsomeness.
*Judaism on the other hand refused to have anything to do with graven images and believed that the purpose of life was not mere pleasure but serious duty to G-d and man.
* The Greeks did not have one but many deities who were like earthly beings with human frailties, faults and lusts.
* By way of contrast, the Jewish G-d was one and unique, perfect and timeless. Though the scriptures occasionally used human terms (eyes, hands, etc.) to describe Him, these were just poetical expressions.